The use of manually operable spray containers, especially spray bottles, for dispensing reagents such as water, detergent cleaners, de-icers, insecticides and the like, as an alternative to environmentally harmful aerosols, are well known.
The most spray dispenser bottles currently on the market, are pre-filled with a chemical reagent and sold ready to use.
Once the contents of these spray dispenser bottles have been used up, these spray dispenser bottles are often thrown away despite the fact that they mostly remain fully functional.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,529,216 discloses a chemical reservoir mountable in the neck of a spray bottle dispenser for replenishing the active chemical reagent solution to be sprayed from the spray bottle dispenser. Accordingly, once the initial solution has been used up, the consumer need only refill the spray bottle with water, whereafter the chemical concentrate carried within the chemical reservoir is opened mixed with the water to provide a use solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,529,216 teaches a reservoir cartridge having a pierceable, metal foil upper wall and pierceable plastic lower wall. The concentrate contained herein, is released into a spray container bottle, by means of a needle member associated with a spray head, which is pushed through the upper metal foil wall and lower plastic wall of the reservoir cartridge to rupture these, on assembling the spray dispenser, whereby concentrate held therein is released into the spray bottle container through the ruptured lower wall of the cartridge. A disadvantage with this cartridge is that on piercing the lower wall, concentrate is not released at a sufficiently acceptable rate to provide quickly a use solution.
This needle member doubles as a down-tube for the spray head for transmitting liquid from the spray bottle to the spray head.
EP-A-0 606 672 discloses a system for diluting and dispensing liquid material including a rigid cartridge containing concentrated liquid, which cartridge is placed in the interior of the upper mouth of a bottle containing water. Said cartridge is opened at the bottom side thereof by screwing an atomizer onto a threaded mouth piece of the bottle, so that the concentrated liquid present in the rigid cartridge is released into the water. Further cartridge-like devices for use in recharging a chemical reagent solution in spray dispenser bottles, are known from the U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,096 and the German patent document DE 3535986.
A further system for introducing concentrate into a spray dispenser bottle is known from the German patent document DE 19621774.
Another system for introducing concentrate into a spray dispenser bottle is known from the Italian patent document no. 1188018.
Although the devices and systems known from the prior art are functional, they are difficult to make and/or awkward to fill with concentrate, and very often need to be thoroughly cleaned, once filled, in order to be ready for sale.
Furthermore, these types of cartridges often require relatively speaking, a lot of raw material, making them difficult to manufacture. Accordingly, these cartridges are often both with respect to man hours and raw materials expensive to make and fill, making them economically unattractive.
Another problem with known devices and systems is that standard spray containers and/or spray dispenser heads very often need to be modified and/or require extra working features, in order to co-operate therewith. Furthermore such known devices and systems often suffer from leakage.
Under standard spray containers is understood typically containers having a volume of 0.5-1.0 L with a single standard screw neck.
An object of the present invention is to provide a device which substantially overcomes all of these problems.